Apple Inc. (AAPL) iPhone 5 Gets China Network License

Apple iPhone 5 just passed their final regulatory license in China. This means that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) can finally start making plans to get their sixth generation smartphones into stores.

Last Sunday, China Telecom started to take pre-orders from the country’s carriers. They also told the customers that they would notify them when the phones started to go on sale in stores, which should be sometime in December.

Interesting enough, in the listing for China telecom networks, there was no indication that China Unicom would be one of the carriers. Unicom previously said they would start carrying the iPhone 5 in December.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) recently confirmed via a conference call the the iPhone 5 would arrive in China by late December. Around that time, Apple already received two of their required certifications.

Now that the pieces are coming together and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has established plans to bring their current iPhone to China, the company has a lot to look forward to. They’ve already started to stabilize their supply chain to ensure the backlogs are decreased.

China’s market is crucial to Apple’s growth. The company owns 70 percent of the country’s tablet market and they don’t want to lose their numbers. There is concern that the demand for the iPhone is decreasing in the country. A high percentage of Chinese consumers are switching to cheaper phones and another group of consumers have switched from the iPhone to the Samsung smartphones.

There is no word yet on whether China’s mobile consumers got tired of waiting for the sixth generation Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) smartphone, or if they are truly losing interest. If the latter is true, it may only be a matter of time until the rest of the world loses interest in the iPhone. For now, we can only wait to see how well the new iPhone sells and if the demand grows again.